ASSISTANT FIRE CHIEF RETIRES AFTER 33 YEARS

Max Jauch hasn't worked in too many places, but the 33-year career firefighter never wanted to.

"When I came here to start work, I planned on retiring here," Jauch said.

After last Friday he won't work anywhere. Cape Girard-eau's assistant fire chief is retiring.

Jauch, 55, has spent most of his life around Cape Girardeau. He only left here to serve in the Air Force, and after that spent the first five years of his firefighting career in Kalamazoo, Mich.

His Michigan brother-in-law talked him into firefighting, Jauch said.

"I had my interview on January 16, and started work January 17," he said.

Prior to being hired by the Kalamazoo Fire Department, Jauch had no firefighting training. Everything was learned on the job, he said.

"From learning to put on a mask to putting ladders up, we were taught everything in a two-week crash course," Jauch said.

Jauch's first fire was not memorable for its dramatic circumstances. It involved a TV dinner burning up in an oven, he said.

When his fire truck pulled up to the house, he was told to hook up a hose to the nearest fire hydrant. But the hydrant was a block away.

Jauch learned something about where to park a fire truck, he said.

"It didn't take long to unwind the hose, but winding it back up took a long time," he said.

After five years in Kalamazoo, Mich., Jauch decided driving back and forth to Cape Girardeau about six times a year to see family, friends and his future wife, Charlotte Sue, was too much hassle. He got a job with the Cape Girardeau Fire Department.

Besides having only 36 firefighters compared to Kalamazoo's 155, Jauch noticed other differences. Cape Girardeau used Windex to clean windshields rather than less expensive ammonia. The fire truck's cabs were enclosed here, while in Michigan Jauch's department rode in open cabs, exposed to the weather.

"It wasn't so hard to get used to there, since in the Air Force I was stationed in Greenland and Alaska," he said.

Jauch recalls a few details about the fires he has fought in Cape Girardeau. The years are hard to remember, but the locations are etched in his memory.

"They stand out more when you're in charge," Jauch said.

A fire at SEMO Heavy Industries caused by arson is easy for him to recall.

"It was April Fool's Day, 1993," Jauch said.

Jauch has always enjoyed digging through rubble to discover the reason for a fire, he said. By doing this, he has been able to put four men in jail for arson.

"I believe they're still there," he said.

An elderly woman who lived in the 600 block of Jefferson was hard to get away from her burning home during a fire that Jauch can only narrow down to sometime in the 1970s.

She sat on the back of a rescue vehicle, refusing to leave until someone went into her house for her cigarettes.

"She wouldn't leave until someone went back and got her cigarettes," Jauch said. "I think we did it only to get rid of her."

Jauch has a better memory for fires than rescues. He doesn't like to remember rescues.

"They either happen at some farm pond or in the river," he said. "And more than likely they become a recovery operation instead of a rescue very quickly."

Jauch recalls a 22-year-old man who waded into the Mississippi River from Riverfront Park in 1997 to swim, and has never been seen again. Once a week or so, Jauch said he will go down to the river to look at the location where Dallan Hutson disappeared.

"I don't believe I'll ever see him, but I still go down there," he said.

Although Jauch looks forward to traveling with his wife while he continues to manage an apartment building in Cape Girardeau, he will miss the day-to-day contact with other firefighters.

"You work with these guys 24 hours a day sometimes, and they know your innermost secrets," Jauch said. "It's like your second family."

But Jauch remembers at least one fire that he didn't want any other firefighters to handle, or know about.

A few years after he had started work with the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, he was at home working on his motorcycle while his wife was looking after a baby when a grease fire started in their kitchen. Jauch's wife called him in, and he was able to cover it with a lid and take the pan outside without much serious damage.

When he called his insurance company to report the incident, he was asked if he had called the fire department.

"I said, 'No, I work for the fire department, and I'm definitely not going to be calling them,' " Jauch said.